With the familiar winding streets replaced with a sea of concrete, glass-bottomed canals and imposing skyscrapers this is how London might have looked if ambitious architects had got their way.

The strange skyline, could be compared with a 1960s science fiction film, shows what the capital might have become, were it not for strict planning legislation and worried campaigners.

Using the latest digital technology including maps and models, artists have created these alternative views of the city for the exhibition Almost Lost: London's Buildings Loved And Loathed, which opens today.

Alternative: Digital technology has been used to show how Soho would have looked today had a 1954 proposal to transform the area into a giant conservatory topped with 24-storey tower blocks had gone ahead

Skyline: This image created for a new English Heritage exhibition shows how the proposed Soho towers would have been visible from Trafalgar Square

Depicting the worst nightmare of many a NIMBY, the images reveal some of the most bizarre and brilliant development projects pitched for the city over the decades.

The images provide a glimpse of what the city might have looked like if Brutalist concrete-based designs, popular between the 1950s and 1970s, had been granted planning permission.

Among the most shocking is a 1954 scheme to replace Soho with a giant conservatory topped with 24-storey tower blocks, the district's maze of busy streets and alleyways swapped for landscaped gardens and glass-bottomed canals.

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In place of the famous Carnaby Street and Old Compton Street, visitors could have enjoyed a game of tennis on purpose-built courts, while famous old theatres would have made way for modern concert halls.

The proposal, dreamed up by Geoffrey Jellico, Ove Arup and Edward Mills, was published in Architect and Building News although it never made it past the initial conceptual phase.

Stark: Had a 1968 draft plan to redevelop Covent Garden gone ahead only St Martin In The Fields would have remained. The rest of the historic buildings would have been replaced with concrete structures

Unfamiliar: Designers behind this 1962 proposal for Piccadilly Circus thought it would improve the social, commercial and tourist values of the area

Many of the designs were attempting to re-work the city's landscape after many streets and landmarks were decimated by bombs during the Second World War.

The way the city was used also changed after the conflict, with many people leaving London for the suburbs.

City planners and designers were also keen to use the latest new materials available, and forms of architecture such as high-rise buildings.

Polly Hudson, who curated the show as founder of The Building
Exploratory charitable trust, told The Independent: 'Jellico talks about the vibrant
area of Soho, but he doesn’t connect.

'It has taken us time to connect
the actual retention of that character and how it connects to people,
and buildings and layers of history. You can’t just knock something down
and retain the character.'

Changing places: An aerial view of the proposed Carlton House Terrace, which sits alongside the Mall. Buckingham Palace can also be seen in this image, at the far end of the lake

Reality: Carlton House Terrace, as it is today. All of the images are on display as part of exhibition Almost Lost: London's Buildings Loved And Loathed

A decade later Sir Leslie Martin, designer of the Royal Festival Hall, proposed a plan to 'replan' Whitehall by demolishing virtually all the Edwardian and Victorian buildings around Parliament Square, including the Treasury, Foreign Office and War Office.

Sir Leslie's scheme also proposed the creation of a new riverside square to the left of Big Ben with raised public restaurants facing the river.

Elevated roads ran between this and the Thames with an underpass running beneath a raised river terrace in front of Parliament.

The aim was to take separate traffic from pedestrains and address a 175% rise in traffic flow since 1945 and anticipated doubling by 1977.

The exhibition also highlights a digital vision of how Covent Garden might have looked had a 1968 development plan gone ahead.

Under the controversial proposal much of the south-western corner of Covent Garden would have been lost to concrete terracing, and apart from St Martin's in the Field, no other buildings in the area would have been retained.

The local community rallied against plans to
demolish vast parts of the area led, somewhat intriguingly,
by one of the planners who had worked on the original demolition
proposals.

New corridors of power: In 1964 Sire Leslie Martin, designer of the Royal Festival Hall, wanted to 'replan' Whitehall by demolishing virtually all the Edwardian and Victorian buildings around Parliament Square

Alongside the new digital aspect, the exhibition reveals
that without the actions of thousands of individuals and
organisations who campaigned to save
the threatened places, recorded those that were lost and helped drive
through protective legislation, much more of the city we know today
would be lost or irreparably altered.

Alternative images of Kingsway, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Carlton House Terrace and Battersea Power Station can also be seen in the English Heritage exhibition at Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner, which runs until February.

The exhibition also features an animated map of all buildings, scheduled monuments, conservation areas, registered parks, gardens and battlefields protected by the National Heritage List for England.

A model of 1840’s Bloomsbury allows visitors to explore the area’s development over the decades using ‘Augmented Reality’ on iPads which are passed over the model and display digital maps of the place as it was and as it is now.

Dr Simon Thurley, Chief Executive of English Heritage, said: 'Almost Lost tells the story of how lucky we have been.

'Thanks to the campaigning efforts of our predecessors we still have a beautiful city to enjoy.

'While we don’t face the wholesale destruction of the 1960s and 70s we still face problems today and the sort of technology we demonstrate in the exhibition is part of the modern armoury of conservation.'

A BLOT ON THE LANDSCAPE OR A HISTORICAL TREASURE? NAVIGATING THE BRUTALIST CONCRETE JUNGLE

Brutal: Centre Point in London is one of the city's many examples of Brutalist architecture

Spawned from the modernist architectural movement, Brutalism is a style of architecture defined by concrete fortress-like buildings which flourished between the 1950s and mid-1970s.

Brutalist architecture is loved and hated in equal measure, with plans to demolish the monolith structures often confronted with campaigns to save them.

Examples of the typically linear style include London's Southbank Centre, which houses the Haywood Gallery, and the Grade-II listed Centre Point at the bottom of Tottenham Court Road.

Initially the style, which often features an 'unfinished concrete' look was used for government buildings, low-rent housing and shopping centres to create functional structures at a low cost, but eventually designers adopted the look for other uses including arts centres and libraries.

Critics of the style find it unappealing due to its 'cold' appearance, and many of the buildings have become symbols of urban decay, coated in graffiti.

Despite this, Brutalism is appreciated by others, with many buildings having received Listed status.

English architects Alison and Peter Smithson were believed to have coined the term in 1953, from the French béton brut, or 'raw concrete', although Swedish architect Hans Asplund clained he used the term in a conversation in 1950. The term became more widely used in 1966 when British architectural critic Reyner Banham used it in the title of his book, The New Brutalism: Ethic Or Aesthetic?